association. For several years, the government has been encouraging both large-scale operators and homeowners to install batteries wherever they add solar panels, leading to growth in both. Even as solar installations stagnated in Europe as a whole, those in Romania grew by 45% in 2025, driven by high demand and fast permitting. As in the rest of Europe, one of the big boosts for Romania’s solar industry was Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, which sent energy costs skyrocketing. High electricity prices and generous subsidies induced about 330,000 “prosumers” (households and firms that are not primarily energy producers) to install solar panels on their property. As generating capacity rose, the priority shifted to storing power. Last year the government eliminated some taxes on electricity storage. In May it announced it would divert €76m ($89m) in solar subsidies toward batteries. Savings-hungry Romanians seized the opportunity. By the first half of 2026, about a third of prosumers had installed battery systems. Just as important as the amount of storage is where you put it. If batteries are far from generators, it means the grid has to ferry around still more power. So Romania is encouraging its solar parks, some of the largest in Europe, to add batteries onsite. The most prominent is Ogrezeni, a development set to include a gigawatt-hour of battery storage alongside 762 megawatts of solar capacity. The project will be one of Europe’s largest solar-battery hybrids when it comes online in 2027. Romania is becoming one of Europe’s prime battery storage markets, according to Sina Heidari and Bart Stoffer of DNV, an international energy consulting firm. In the short term, requiring plants to have grid connections and batteries before installing panels can slow down the pace. Romania is doing so anyway, to avoid bottlenecks in the long term. AFM, the agency that distributes subsidies for renewables, has axed solar grants in favour of those for batteries. For solar developers, Romania raised the minimum sum that companies must deposit when they apply for connections to the grid. This deters developers from lodging frivolous applications simply in order to get in line for connections. Since many power distributors handle such applications on a first-come first-served basis, this is a widespread problem in many countries, creating a backlog of connection requests.
At the start of Europe’s solar revolution, the impulse was to get panels deployed by all means. As the industry matures, countries need to strike a balance between generating capacity and storage. Romania looks like a model. ■ This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com/europe/2026/08/27/europes-new-renewable-energy-champion- is-a-surprise
European countries are battling over rules on booze Belgium wants advertisers to note that alcohol is bad for you, Italy does not Aug 27th 2026 The World Cup was a bright moment both for Spain and for its drinks sales. On match days, profits in the country’s bars were 25-30% higher than average. But despite the sunny, beery terraces, a storm was brewing for Spain’s booze industry—and Europe’s. Sales of beer and wine have been sliding for years. Now some countries want to tighten regulations on alcohol. In March Belgium told the European Commission it wanted to pass laws that prohibit advertising alcohol to minors. It also wants a blunter mandatory warning on advertising, stating that “alcohol is harmful to health.” (The
current one states merely that “alcohol abuse harms your health.”) Wine- producing countries, including France, Italy, Romania and Slovakia, have filed objections. They say the Belgian laws would fragment the advertising market and erect barriers to foreign firms. The provision causing the most alarm is the statement that alcohol inevitably causes harm. Brewers and vintners fear that shadowy public-health forces plan to do to booze what they did to tobacco: stigmatise it as poisonous and socially undesirable. Adding to the tension are cultural issues. In warm, relaxed Mediterranean countries, such as Italy, Portugal and France, alcoholic beverages are enjoyed with a meal or sipped on a terrace. The cold “vodka belt” countries, including the Baltics and Nordics, have long had cultures of heavy drinking of hard liquor, and government policies to discourage it. Members of the European Parliament have pushed for continent-wide legislation to mandate warnings and ingredient lists on bottles. But Aurelijus Veryga, a Lithuanian MEP and former health minister, thinks cultural divisions make a tobacco-style agreement on alcohol unlikely. The commission has been promising booze regulation for years, but never seems to deliver. Deadlines for health warnings on alcohol set in its cancer plan of 2021 have gone unmet. The diplomatic risks of regulating alcohol are clear. In 2018 Ireland became the first European Union member to mandate that bottles carry cancer warnings, a pregnancy warning and calorie and energy information. Italy responded by calling this an “attack” on Italian identity, heritage and the Mediterranean diet, and insisted that wine was a factor in well-being. It rallied other wine-producing nations, including France, Greece, Portugal and Spain, to object too. The Irish restrictions became law nonetheless, but America then complained that the rules constituted a trade barrier. The deployment of warning labels was subsequently deferred until 2028 (due to “economic circumstances”). Countries that want to regulate alcohol might look to Lithuania. As health minister, Dr Veryga succeeded in passing wide-ranging restrictions, including a near-total ban on advertising and restricted hours for retail liquor sales. But he says this was only possible thanks to public demand after a
series of horrendous incidents, including a drink-driving accident in which three children were killed by an off-duty policeman. “If society is not on your side, you have already lost,” he says, over a glass of alcohol-free beer. In Belgium, the efforts are driven by Frank Vandenbroucke, the health minister, who has struggled to gain broad political support. He has the backing of public-health charities, which are concerned by growing evidence of alcohol’s harms, particularly in raising the likelihood of cancer. Rebecka Öberg of Movendi, a group that promotes alcohol- and drug-free lifestyles, says her organisation wants people to make educated decisions about drinking. That requires better labelling. With regard to cancer, it is technically correct to say that there is “no safe level” of alcohol consumption. But there remains debate over the point at which the risk becomes meaningful. The incremental risks of drinking a few glasses of wine or beer a week, rather than none at all, might be so low as to render a warning that “alcohol is harmful to health” disproportionate. Europeans routinely engage in other behaviours that carry a non-zero cumulative risk of developing cancer, such as sunbathing, eating bacon and drinking coffee heated to more than 65°C.
The irony of Mr Vandenbroucke’s efforts is that Belgian alcohol consumption is falling anyway. Among members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a club of mostly rich countries, Belgium is one of the two countries whose consumption has decreased the most in the past decade. Lithuania, with its recently tightened laws, is the other. Indeed, the populations of most high-income countries are moderating their drinking habits, in part due to health concerns. The decline in beer consumption is especially sharp: it has slumped by 9.2% in the EU since 2019. But in economic terms, every crisis is also an opportunity. Today nearly one of every 12 beers drunk across the EU is alcohol-free. The rise of 0.0% brew means that, no matter which side of the alcohol debate you sit on, you have something with which to toast. ■ This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com/europe/2026/08/27/european-countries-are-battling-over- rules-on-booze
Can music festivals save the melting Alps? Europe’s ski resorts must reinvent themselves for a hotter future Aug 27th 2026 It was a distinctly meditative concert, performed by a pianist-composer and a woman who strokes crystal bowls. Some 250 people had gathered in a meadow high in the Italian Alps, facing the moonlit bulk of Mt Chaberton. The Deipratiedellestelle (Of Meadows and Stars) festival brings music, dance and performance to an area usually known for its winter sports. With Europe experiencing severe heatwaves, such events have taken on added significance: the Alps are warming at more than twice the northern hemisphere’s average rate. “You cannot base all your tourism on skiing at a time when the ski season is getting shorter and shorter,” says Daniela Cattaneo, the festival’s producer.
Artificial snowmaking helps. Researchers in 2023 found that of 2,000 ski resorts across Europe, over half will lack enough snow in one winter out of two if mean temperatures reach 2°C above pre-industrial levels. With snow cannons for half their skiable surface, that would fall to 27%. But snowmaking is expensive and uses lots of electricity and water. “It cannot keep pace with global warming,” says Daniel Scott, a geographer at the University of Waterloo in Canada. At the lower-altitude resorts that most need snowmaking, temperatures more often rise too high for it to be possible. Another strategy is to build high-tech gondolas to whisk skiers to ever- higher altitudes. Several feature in a €50m ($58m) programme unveiled last December by Italy’s Piedmont region. But these can overcrowd the peaks, and are useless to inexperienced skiers and snowboarders who prefer gentle lower slopes. So mountain regions must find more things for tourists to do. “Adaptation strategies based on diversification of mountain activities and revenues are crucial,” as a Bank of Italy study puts it. Luckily, high temperatures will also lead some holidaymakers to flee Mediterranean beaches. Cultural events, wellness centres, mountain biking and lake swimming can draw them to the mountains. Whistler Blackcomb, North America’s largest ski resort, now gets more visits in summer than in winter. In Piedmont the investment in diversification remains modest—less than €6m of the €50m modernisation programme. Mr Scott says much depends on how soon European policymakers and investors see the writing on the ice. Resorts that establish themselves early as year-round or summer venues will gain an invaluable reputational advantage. He is collaborating on a project to model which ones are most likely to go out of business: “Certainly 25% in the next 20 years.” With grim humour, the project is entitled “Après Ski”. ■ This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com/europe/2026/08/27/can-music-festivals-save-the-melting- alps